Read the news from all international angles and create your independent opinion
BREAKING!
Kyle Marisa Roth has been found dead and no cause of death given.
She recently uploaded a video exposing Oprah and David Geffen’s involvement of trying to cancel and smear Michael Jackson with Leaving Neverland and more recently her videos covering the Diddy… pic.twitter.com/gPTUtFX0uq
— JR (@jamster83) April 16, 2024
The unemployment rate increased to 4.2% between December and February, which is the highest level for six months.
Meanwhile, the rate of people with a job dipped and the economically inactive – those not in work or looking for employment – ticked higher.
Economists suggested the data could spur the Bank of England to cut interest rates in the summer.
“With employment falling sharply and the unemployment rate climbing, we suspect wage growth will continue to ease in the coming months,” said Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics.
“That may allow the Bank to cut interest rates in June.”
Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG UK, added: “Easing pressure in the labour market keeps the Bank on track for a summer rate cut.”
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said there are “tentative signs that the jobs market is beginning to cool”.
Overall, the ONS said the UK’s unemployment rate rose from 3.9% in the three months to January and surpassed economists’ forecast of an increase to 4%.
In total, there were 1.4 million unemployed people in the UK between December and February, it said.
However, other figures showed that while average wage growth, excluding bonuses, edged down from 6.1% to 6% it remained far above forecasts.
And, when taking inflation into account, real wages rose by 1.9% in the three months to February. This was the highest since the three months to September in 2021.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt praised the growth in real wages and said that with the government’s recent cut in National Insurance for the employed and self-employed, which came into force on 6 April, “people should start to feel the difference”.
But a freeze in income tax thresholds until 2028 means that as people’s wages increase they risk entering a higher bracket and paying more tax.
Wage growth is a key point monitored by the Bank of England when deciding whether or not to cut interest rates because it can fuel inflation – which measures the pace at which prices are rising.
The rate of inflation has been easing. From a record high of 11.1% in October 2022, it slowed to 3.4% in the year to February and new data due out on Wednesday is expected to show a further deceleration for the 12 months to March.
As India votes starting April 19, Modi’s dreams of record win hinge on a part of the country long immune to BJP charms.
US president blasts rival Donald Trump as an out-of-touch elitist on visit to key battleground state.
Voting under way in Solomon Islands election which is being closely watched by Australia, China and the United States.
Lloyd Austin and Dong Jun talk South China Sea, Taiwan, North Korea and Ukraine in wide-ranging discussion.
In the second 12 months on the front line the body count was nearly 25% higher than in the first year.
Australia’s spectacular Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its worst bleaching event on record, the country’s reef authority reported on Wednesday.
The United Nations Security Council will vote Thursday on the Palestinians’ application to become a full UN member state, several diplomatic sources have told AFP. Follow our liveblog for the latest updates on the situation in the Middle East.
Russian-born IT entrepreneur Pavel Durov said that he was “pressured” by the FBI during his stays in America
The US government had wanted a backdoor to Telegram in order to potentially spy on its users, the social media platform’s founder Pavel Durov said in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson. The attention from the FBI was one of the reasons Durov dropped the idea of setting up the company in San Francisco, he said.
Born in St Petersburg, Durov first founded VK, Russia’s answer to Facebook, together with his mathematician brother Nikolay. The brothers later developed the Telegram messaging service and social media platform, which describes itself as one of the safest and well-protected communication tools.
Durov sold his stake in VK and left Russia in 2014 due to disagreements with the government. He lived in several countries while looking for the best place to run Telegram from, and ultimately settled in Dubai.
In an interview published on Wednesday, Durov said that he visited the US several times and even met with former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. He was under the watchful eye of the FBI, which made his stays in America uneasy, he said.
Read more
Telegram founder reveals Tucker Carlson interview
“We got too much attention from the FBI, the security agencies, wherever we came,” Durov told Carlson, describing the experience as “alarming.”
According to Durov, one of his top employees once told him that he had been approached by the US government. “There was a secret attempt to hire my engineer behind my back by cybersecurity officers,” the businessman said.
“They were trying to persuade him to use certain open-source tools that he would then integrate into Telegram’s code that, in my understanding, would serve as backdoors,” Durov said. He added that he believes the employee’s account. “There is no reason for my engineer to make up (such) stories.”
Durov went on to say that he also had “personally experienced similar pressure” in America, where law enforcement officials approached him on multiple occasions.
Evenever I would go to the US, I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time, I was having breakfast at 9 am and the FBI showed up at the house that I was renting.
“My understanding is that they wanted to establish a relationship to control Telegram better. I understand that they were doing their job. [But] for us, running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in,” Durov explained.
The tech entrepreneur acknowledged that Telegram has been used by protest organizers in many countries around the world. He stressed, however, that he wants the platform to remain politically neutral and not take any sides.